Another look at the Bringing Your Own Device trend

Mary Ursula HerrmannMary Ursula Herrmann is a Network Security Analyst living in Juneau, AK. She has worked in Information Security for over 15 years, and obtained her CISSP in 2005.

I've written in the past about the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) trend and how it can impact your enterprise in terms of security. I've also mentioned that the trend isn't going to go away. In fact, right about now, if you are a business owner, you may very well have received a new smartphone or other similar gadget over the holidays and be wondering how you can utilize it to increase your own productivity, even if you haven't yet considered that a possibility for your employees.Starting in 1999, when Blackberry's first devices supported by RIM technology came out, businesspeople experienced wider choices for staying connected to the enterprise via an always-on phone rather than having to boot up a computer to check email. Only a decade later, however, Apple's iPhone had supplanted Blackberrys in popularity, and iPhone owners who either hadn't received a Blackberry from their employers or who had but didn't want to carry two devices were clamoring for a way to get work email as easily as on the RIM devices. Even before that, Windows phone owners had wanted email connectivity for their devices, and a few years after iPhone, Android appeared on the scene, and its adherents also wanted more enterprise connectivity. That's what led to the BYOD trend. The fact that AT&T pushed iPhones at all their partner companies is probably what fueled it initially, breaking Blackberry's hold on the enterprise. Competition in a niche is a good thing, but enterprises weren't ready for the new smartphones, in terms of security. In the past decade, however, new device management technology has also sprung up to fill the space that RIM's management backend had satisfied for Blackberrys. Some of the management software is based in the Cloud (SaaS) and some is meant to be run within the enterprise. The best Mobile Device Management (MDM) supports, at a minimum, Windows Phone, iOS, and Android devices, and it's even better if it will also support Blackberry and Symbian. (While I can't formally endorse any vendor, AirWatch does support all these devices at an excellent price point.)In addition to supporting a wide range of device types, the ideal MDM solution will also allow end users to use their devices the way they want on their own time, while safeguarding corporate data by using encryption for connections and data and separate containers. Virus protection and controlled access to applications should also be a part of MDM, since especially in the case of the more “open” Android platform, rogue applications can seriously impact device security. That very openness, however, is part of Android's draw for its users, so as long as you are employing MDM - and monitoring carefully - you shouldn't ban that platform from your enterprise. (I'll admit to being a huge Android fan myself.)I've mentioned Software as a Service (SaaS) as one platform for MDM in this article, and next week I'll explore more about SaaS and its advantages for enterprise security. In the meantime, whichever MDM solution you pick, this is probably an excellent time to get on the BYOD bandwagon and let your employees use all their new gadgets for productivity's sake.

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